RikkiUW

December '19 Play Log & 2019 Summary

December 2019 Overall:

15%
22%
9%
44%
10%

December 2018 Overall:

7%
16%
14%
57%
6%

December 2019 SG:

23%
47%
2%
13%
16%

December 2018 SG:

13%
37%
7%
33%
10%

Happy New Year everyone! Hope you’re all enjoying any holidays you may have. Overall I think I’ve made decent progress on my backlog this year.
Sorry in advance for the super long post, I’ve been too busy to do a mid-month post.


Assassin's Creed Rogue

Assassin's Creed Rogue

4/10
15 hours playtime
no achievements

If you enjoyed Black Flag you may like this one as long as you don’t expect much. If you enjoyed Assassin’s Creed 2 & Brotherhood, are looking for an intriguing story of an assassin being seduced/tricked by the bad guys, or at least some new/improved game mechanics stay away, you will be very disappointed. It’s really unfortunate because the game does have at least some potential, but it rushes way too much and the writing is lazy rather than creative.

Pros:

  • Didn’t crash?

Cons:

  • Keeps the grindy naval warfare where you need to engage in naval battles to get enough resources to upgrade before you can proceed with the story
  • Instead of introducing you to an Assassin and telling you how he got there such that you can relate to him it’s just ‘You play as this guy. His name’s Shay’. Minor parts of his backstory are mentioned but you never learn enough to be able to relate to him they way you could with Ezio
  • Areas and characters are reused from Black Flag and III. I’m not inherently opposed to this, but they don’t take the time to explain well enough how it all fits together. For 90% of the game I was convinced it was because they couldn’t possibly fit together properly. It wasn’t until the very end they mentioned something and enough of it fell into place for me to see that it does have some potential to be a good story.
  • It feels like they’re just throwing a bunch of information at you rather than telling a story. Some of it’s relevant, some of it isn’t.
  • The out of Animus parts are a waste of time. There’s nothing interesting, no real story, just a random guy (you) being ordered about. Unlike with Desmond none of the characters are likeable, relatable, or even remotely interesting. It’s more filler than anything else; like they felt obligated to include some out of animus parts.
  • Gameplay wise, most of it is from other games and what little new things there is I didn’t really find useful.
  • There’s no fascinating story of being seduced/fooled by the Templars. As mentioned in other reviews, the assassin’s are jerks, and that’s pretty much all there is to it. Basically, the assassin’s are the bad guys and the Templars save the world, with no valid reason for why they’ve swapped places~.

Verdict: 4/10

Play of Pay pick. Overall I was disappointed with this game. It’s my own fault, I didn’t realize it was so similar to Black Flag. I was intrigued by the story, wondering how they’d go about convincing an Assassin to become a Templar. Lets just say the story writing was very lazy and leave it at that.


Mass Effect

Mass Effect

10/10
27 hours playtime
no achievements

Truly a masterpiece, and I now understand why this game is still played so many years after release. If there’s anyone who’s never played this and is a fan of FPS games, or heavily story based games, give this a try.

Pros:

  • Exceptionally well voice acted, including some recognizable voices
  • Graphics have aged well, and cutscenes are well animated
  • Well animated
  • Your actions/reactions/conversation choices in various situations can genuinely affect the story and how you’re perceived, and even small details such as news heard in elevators is influenced
  • The character customization is very good
  • The various classes allow you to play the game however you want. I chose infiltrator and the stealth/sniper route, but there’s nothing to stop you going in guns blazing. The various fights never felt like any class would be at a disadvantage

Cons:

  • Despite being nearly 30 hours long, it felt short. There’s plenty to explore and many side missions, but it felt like there weren’t too many main missions. That may simply be the ‘time flies when you’re having fun’ effect though.
  • My biggest complaint was driving the Mako. It was hard to control. Once I got used to that it was fun for a while, but it felt way too light and got air and dove off the (wrong) side of a mountain at the slightest bump. Driving it quickly became a chore
  • Again driving the Mako, you know about various signals/some debris on your map, and sometimes come across more that aren’t marked. Once discovered though they’re not always added to your big map, which caused confusion for me at least once.

Verdict: 10/10

Very long Play or Pay pick. Thanks to ninglor03 for making me finally play it. I absolutely loved it and am hoping to start the second one some point soon before I forget about the story too much.


Plantera

Plantera

1/10
20 hours playtime

Why does this game even exist? What’s the point?

Pros:

  • Sort of cute?

Cons:

  • You don’t need to do anything but click - and once you’ve got a few upgrades you don’t even have to do that, the game will play itself
  • No strategy, nothing, just click and wait
  • I highly recommend an auto clicker

Verdict: 1/10

Another PoP pick. Absolute garbage SG win from ages ago that I shouldn’t have entered for.

Farmington Tales

Farmington Tales

2 hours playtime
no achievements

Crappy game that doesn’t even know what it is. Part simple farming sim, part repetitive puzzle game, and part HOG, all wrapped in a boring story that drags on for way too long. If you like HOGs and don’t mind the same scenes over and over than you may be OK with it, but I’d recommend sticking to Artifex Mundi games.

Verdict: 2/10

See previous comment.


The Warlock of Firetop Mountain

The Warlock of Firetop Mountain

7/10
5 hours playtime

I had abandoned this one ages ago and finally got back to it. I’m too lazy to review it :P. It’s decent but figuring out the correct path to get to the Warlock requires redoing it a few times, and while you do have the option to take different paths (and different characters have different missions) I still found it a bit too repetitive for my taste. I ended up using a guide to pick the correct route to the top.


Broken Age

Broken Age

7/10
8 hours playtime

Decent little point and click with a reasonably interesting story. Nothing about it stuck out as particularly bad or good.

Pros:

  • Some cute characters
  • Some funny moments
  • Good voice acting

Cons:

  • I found some of the puzzles more difficult and ended up using a walkthrough for parts
  • Has a speedrun achievement

Verdict: 7/10

Decent point and click that had some laughs. I’ve come to the conclusion I’m getting sick of point and clicks though.


The Room Three

The Room Three

7/10
6 hours playtime

If you enjoyed the first two games you’ll like this well enough.

Pros:

  • It continues to be impressive how many intricately designed puzzles they can fit into one small box
  • Puzzles are a decent for the most part

Cons:

  • The puzzles required for the alternate ending are much more difficult in parts, and lack hints
  • Most of the time the hints appear much too fast, not taking into account the time to get to and explore a new area/part/etc before giving a hint
  • Some of the hints are useless (e.g. when locked in a room, ‘there must be a way out of here’. No ♥♥♥♥ Sherlock)
  • The hints don’t stay on screen long enough to read and process the longer hints
  • Navigating rooms continues to be annoying. A map for quick movement, or at least a way to quick move would be very good. It’s annoying when trying to go through a room but having to wait for the cutscene to finish. This is true of puzzles and backing out as well.

Verdict: 7/10

Picked this up during last years winter sale IIRC and finally played it. Decent, but I don’t think I’ll bother getting the next one. I did enjoy it but there are better games out there. Why buy one that I’ll likely give a 7/10 when there are plenty I’d enjoy more?


Recent Acquisitions


Goals Review

I didn’t manage to do as well on my goals as I’d hoped, but I’m still happy with my progress. I don’t think I’m going to do any specific goals this year as I found they sometimes prevented me from playing other games I wanted to, or doing challenges/themes/etc. I’m still trying to have less abandoned games and fewer wishlisted but unplayed games though.

70% beaten SG wins ratio: Achieved this one exactly! Sadly it’s the only one. Given that I’m winning fewer games these days (owing to only entering for ones I want) and play them for PoP and PAGYWOSG I’m not going to have this as a goal this year.

Max 30 40 Wishlist Unplayed games: So I ended the year with 48 game on this list, around the same number I started with, which is quite unfortunate. Not for lack of trying though, I played about 2 per month from that list. Guess I’ll have to work more on buying less games until I play the ones I have :P.

Much fewer abandoned games: 52 is far too many abandoned games considering most of them are good games, but it’s still better than the 66 I started last year with. I had decided mid-year that 55 was a realistic target, so I’m happy with my progress.

Vito

Nice, getting 70% beaten SG wins is not bad. And 52 abandoned games doesn’t sound too bad I think. I would have a smaller backlog and still more games in that category. Do you have a target for this year in mind?

RikkiUW

Thanks. Not specifically. I’d like to give myself more flexibility since I have plenty of games in my backlog that don’t fit into a goal category but look good. Plus a lot of the ones left are longer. I think if I can do an average of one a month I’ll be quite happy.

Vito

Yeah, I can understand. A lot of the games I want to tackle soon are on the longer side too. 1 long game per month seems like a reasonable goal!

Arbiter Libera

Assassin’s Creed: Rogue

That’s Rogue for you. I remember liking the game because it was more Black Flag, but in a locale I enjoyed more and at least had a story with some ties to overall mythos versus “random pirates picks up assassin gear and learns how to be one” Edward rocked. I agree about the Animus part, though. Those should’ve been gone after AC3.

Mass Effect

I largely agree, especially because it was an extremely well produced RPG when it came out and blew everyone’s mind with cinematic presentation, but I think ME2 is a superior game when it comes down to it even if it axed a lot of RPG stuff in the process. TPS gameplay in the original is on the clunky side with a questionable cover system. Classes also get way more diversified with identities of their own in the next game.

RikkiUW

Yeah. I did like the ties to other games in Rogue, but found they didn’t do a clear job of explaining them. It didn’t fall into place until the end for me.
Now I’m even more intrigued to play ME2!

Arbiter Libera

I just hope I haven’t built up ME2 too much for you. If you wanted a tighter TPS and shinier graphics I think it definitely delivered in my opinion. Other elements we can over debate later on. :P